Faculty and Staff

Department Chair/Department Leadership

Jay Livingston, professor and chair, received a PhD from the department of Psychology and Social Relations at Harvard University. His research interests include: Culture; Social Psychology; and Crime and Deviance. He teaches courses including: Foundations of Sociological Inquiry and Individual and Society.

Full-Time Faculty

Yasemin Besen-Cassino, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from State University of New York, Stony Brook. Her research interests include: Work and Labor; Youth; Gender; Quantitative Methodology; and Ethnography. She teaches courses including: Sociological Research Methods, Sociology of Gender, Work and Professions, Sociology of the Family, Men & Masculinities, and Interviews and Focus Groups. Besen-Cassino was recognized as University Distinguished Scholar (2012-13). Her most recent book is Consuming Work by Temple University Press (2014). She is also the book review editor for Gender & Society.

Christopher Donoghue, assistant professor, received a PhD in sociology from Fordham University, New York. His research interests include: Ethnic and Racial Prejudice; Social Psychology of Education, and Aging and Health. He teaches courses including: Statistics for Social Research, Sociological Research Methods, Poverty and Social Welfare, Sociology of Education, Data Collection for Research and Evaluation, and Survey Writing.

Benjamin F. Hadis, professor and director of the International Studies program, received a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include: Development/Globalization; Trust; Risk and Social Protection; Ideology. He teaches courses in Sociological Theory and Development/Globalization. His most recent publications range from terror actions as speech acts to the legitimacy underpinnings of universal welfare policies in the promotion of climates of general social trust in nations. Prior to that, he has been involved in the researching the impact of studying abroad on college students.

Sangeeta Parashar, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her research interests include: Social Demography; Development/Globalization; and Sociology of Health and Work. She teaches courses including Statistics for Social Research, Sociology of Aging, Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations, Social Inequality, and Sociology of Population.

Janet Ruane, professor, received a PhD in sociology from Rutgers University. Her research interests include: Research Methods; Popular Culture; Applied Sociology; and Deviance and Social Control. She is the author (along with Karen Cerulo of Rutgers) of a popular text that uses sociology to challenge commonly held yet flawed ideas/beliefs about our social world: Second Thoughts: Sociology Challenges Conventional Wisdom (Sage, 2015). She also is the author of two texts on social research: Essentials of Research Methods (Blackwell/Wiley, 2005) and Introducing Social Research Methods (Wiley, 2016). She regularly teaches the following courses: Social Research Methods, Senior Research Project, Foundations of Sociological Inquiry, and Sociological Perspective.

Stephen Ruszczyk, assistant professor, received a PhD from the City University of New York. His research interests include immigration, citizenship, schools, Latinos, community-based organizations, and qualitative methods. He currently teaches courses including Urban Sociology and Latino Sociology.

Vikash Singh, assistant professor, received a PhD in sociology from Rutgers University. His research interests include: Religion; Race and Ethnicity, Social and Psychoanalytic Theory; and Globalization. He teaches courses on topics of race, social theory, and religion.

Yong Wang, associate professor, received a PhD in sociology from Iowa State University. His research interests include: Theory; Cultural Sociology; Text Analysis; and Statistics. He regularly teaches Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations, Social Statistics, Data Analysis, Sociology of Mass Media, and Social Theory.